


pygmalion

by hellalujah



Series: metamorphoses - a collection of modern myths [2]
Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Living statues, M/M, Modernized Myth, Other, Pining, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 22:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7910623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellalujah/pseuds/hellalujah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When he returned home, he kissed his ivory statue, and found that its lips felt warm. He kissed it again, and found that the ivory had lost its hardness. Aphrodite had granted Pygmalion's wish."</p>
            </blockquote>





	pygmalion

**Author's Note:**

> this is weird and creepy. i hope y'all like it. xo
> 
> the first three scenes were written for a prompt on tumblr, then re-edited and expanded upon.
> 
> soundtrack: [pygmalion - liar](https://soundcloud.com/liarinth/pygmalion)

_Pygmalion offering, first approach'd the shrine,_  
_and then with prayers implored the Powers divine:_  
_almighty Gods, if all we mortals want,_  
_if all we can require, be yours to grant;_  
_make this fair statue mine, he would have said,_  
_but changed his words for shame; and only prayed,_  
_give me the likeness of my ivory maid._

__\- Pygmalion & the Statue, Book X, Ovid’s Metamorphoses_ _

 

\---

“It’s good,” says Anton as he takes a sip of beer.

Dillon starts peeling off his apron and glances at him doubtfully. “Good?”

Anton is quiet for a moment, blinking slowly like he’s searching for the right words. “It’s… life-like,” he says before he looks away to smile unconvincingly at Dillon.

‘It’ is Dillon’s latest project: a life-sized sculpture of a man, or maybe a boy. A little hunched, nude but arranged tastefully, if Dillon says so himself.

And he does.

“You don’t like it,” Dillon mumbles, a bit crestfallen.

“No! No, no, I do,” Anton says hastily, coming over to stand next to Dillon while he shakes out his apron. “It’s just… it’s kind of creepy, I guess?”

Dillon looks at the sculpture for a moment, chews on his tongue. “Creepy how?”

Anton hums and takes another drink. “It’s almost, I don't know, too life-like,” he says eventually. “Is it of someone you know?”

“No,” Dillon says, hangs up his apron and then turns around to look again. “No, I’ve never met anyone who looks like this.”

Anton hums again. “It’s really… it’s beautiful, Dillon, really it is. There’s just… so many weirdly specific details. I don’t know how to explain it.” He goes over to the statue and reaches up, hesitates with his hand in midair to look back at Dillon. “Can I touch?”

Dillon shrugs, crosses his arms self-consciously, and Anton stretches his fingers out to run along the furrowed brow of the sculpture, the beaky nose. The full, pouty lips, curving downward just a bit.

“It looks… sad,” Anton says finally. “It looks really sad.”

He goes quiet and Dillon digs his nails into his arms.

“Let’s go meet up with the others,” he says, uncrossing his arms and dragging his eyes away from the sculpture. Anton's watching him doubtfully when he looks over at him and Dillon grins. “It's not finished yet. It'll be different.”

\---

Dillon staggers back into his apartment well past midnight and flips the deadbolt behind him. He’s drunk, weaving down the hall to his kitchen to chug back some water before he nearly tumbles into the expansive loft area, almost trips over an old half-finished sculpture that he’d abandoned when he’d started…

When he’d started _Porter_.

He hadn’t told Anton that he’d named the sculpture, not after the reaction he’d gotten from him. _Creepy_ , he'd called it. Dillon frowns as he crosses the room, manages not to trip over anything else on his way over to the statue.

“I don't think you're creepy,” he tells it, reaching out to brush his fingers over its white cheek. “I think you're gorgeous.”

He sits heavily down on his stool and sways for a moment, blinking blearily. For a second he'd thought Porter had moved, just a flicker of an eyelid. He must be more drunk than he'd thought.

Dillon watches it closely for a moment before reaching out again and running his thumb across the cold marble of its downturned mouth.

Anton was right. It does look sad.

“I'm sorry,” he tells the statue, and he doesn't know what he's apologizing for but he means it.

A strange urge takes him and it's one he's familiar with now - the urge to kiss the sculpture, to kiss _Porter_. He swallows. He's never done it, has always told himself that maybe that's a line he doesn't want to cross. Anton's told him before that he's eccentric, and maybe he is, but he's not… he's not _crazy_.

But right now he feels like cupping the statue’s cold jaw and pressing his own lips to its cold ones and maybe that _is_ crazy, at least a little.

There’s no one around, he reasons with himself, chewing on the inside of his cheek. And maybe he really is that drunk because he’s leaning in, closing his eyes before he kisses the statue.

Its lips are warm.

Dillon recoils, nearly falls off his chair. He stares wide-eyed at the sculpture and he swears, he _swears_ its lips were warm.

And he's pretty fucking sure it’d just smiled at him.

He swallows. He’s shaking, he can feel it all through his body. Maybe he’s dreaming. Maybe this is a dream.

He’s still trembling when he leans back in to touch its jaw, drag his fingers down the curve he’d spent so long perfecting, and kisses it again.

Its lips move against his and he doesn’t pull away. He’s kissing the sculpture and the sculpture is kissing back.

He swears he’s not crazy.

\---

Dillon wakes the next morning to a pounding on his door that matches the pounding in his head. He’s so hungover that he’s barely able to drag himself out of his bed but he makes it to the door and yanks it open.

Anton grins at him. “Feeling last night, huh? Get dressed, we made brunch plans.”

“ _Christ_ ,” Dillon groans, but he lets Anton into the apartment and goes to shower anyway.

He feels a bit better once he’s done, comes back down from the loft while he’s still shirtless and toweling off his hair. Anton is standing in the studio space, examining the sculpture.

“You changed it,” he says. “It looks really good!”

Dillon jolts. “What?”

“Did you do this last night?” Anton asks, leaning in for a closer look. Dillon stares.

“What are you talking about?” he gets out hoarsely.

Anton turns, confused. “Did you not change it? It looks happier, now. It’s so beautiful, Dillon, really!”

Dillon comes around to look at the sculpture and he has to grab Anton’s shoulder to keep himself from going to the floor. He’s shaking badly and he rubs at his eyes, blinks them wildly in the hopes that he’s seeing things.

It’s smiling, now.

\---

When Dillon comes home from breakfast the statue is still smiling.

It's so subtle that Dillon is a little surprised that Anton had noticed at all. But when Dillon sits down in his stool and peers into the smooth marble face, the beautiful face he spent weeks perfecting, it's definitely… smiling.

Dillon wants to make the smile wider, he realizes. The marble is cold and solid when he reaches up to touch it. To run his fingers down Porter's cheek.

He leans in and presses his forehead to unyielding marble. Still cold. It feels good; he's still hungover, head still throbbing distantly. He stays there for a long while, breathes through the nausea that hasn't abated.

Porter has dimples, he realizes when he finally pulls away.

\---

He can't bring himself to work on the sculpture anymore, barely looks at it the whole week.

A couple of times Dillon looks over and it’s frowning again.

Friday night he goes out with Anton and Hugo and comes home drunk and disorientingly lonely. It's not an uncommon feeling; he's always had a bit of a crush on Anton and when he'd started dating Hugo he'd tried to be angry. But Hugo is so damn sweet and it's hard to stay bitter when he starts smiling.

Dillon drops into his stool and stares at Porter's smooth white face. Definitely frowning again.

He reaches and runs his palm down the sculpture’s arm and for a moment he can imagine the softness of skin, the warmth of blood flowing under it. “Maybe I am crazy,” Dillon murmurs, pressing his fingertips to the bony wrist, over the painstakingly carved veins.

It really is his best work.

He takes a breath and looks up into the statue’s face, shoots it a little smile. “What do you think?”

The statue doesn’t respond and Dillon laughs, mostly at himself. He cups its cheek and closes his eyes and imagines that he can feel Porter's breath puffing out against his lips when he leans in.

“Fuck it, right?” he whispers against marble before kissing the statue.

\---

Dillon jerks up from where he's laid out on the couch. His head throbs and he should really stop drinking so damn much.

The previous night comes flooding back and he looks hesitantly over at the sculpture. Still facing away out the window, shoulders still hunched just a little shyly.

Dillon swallows. He rolls himself off the couch and shuffles across the hardwood on his knees. Forces himself to stand and then drops back down on his stool when the nausea is too much.

His stomach drops and he almost throws up right there in the middle of the studio space.

The statue is smiling again, wide enough that Dillon can see the dips of dimples in each cheek, wide enough to see the tiny wrinkles in the corners of its eyes. Even the eyes have moved, lids half-lowered and now looking off to the side instead of directly out the window.

“Fuck,” says Dillon, because he has no idea what else to say.

He reaches up and thumbs at the crinkled corners of the sculpture’s eyes. He can feel them, tiny ridges of marble that his nail catches on when he drags his thumb across them. He's not just seeing things.

He can't be crazy. This is really happening.

“Are you-,” He stops, catches himself before he can start talking to the statue sober. It’s one thing to talk to inanimate objects while wasted but…

He laughs hoarsely at himself. He made out with the fucking thing, he doesn’t have much further to fall.

“Are you alive?” he whispers, gently running just the tips of his fingers over the shell of one ear. For just a second he swears he can almost feel the texture of hair against his knuckles and it’s like he’s tucking strands behind Porter’s ear.

Behind the sculpture’s ear.

He sucks in a nervous breath. He shouldn’t have named it.

He drops his hand into his lap and he's about to look away but he catches a flicker of movement that makes his head jerk up with such violence that it makes him groan.

The sculpture had blinked. Or… winked?

He stares at it for a long moment before sucking in a steadying breath. “Did you just… wink at me?”

There’s no response and Dillon starts to stand. Doesn’t take his eyes off the sculpture’s face. It’s still looking away and Dillon bites his lip. Maybe he’s been working too hard. Or drinking too much. Maybe it’s a little bit of both and-

The sculpture winks at him, again.

Dillon groans and staggers into the kitchen. He needs coffee. A lot of coffee.

\---

“Wow!”

Dillon’s twitchy today and Hugo’s exclamation makes him jump.

He hasn’t been able to calm down and maybe it has something to do with the three presses of coffee he’s drank, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Anton’s visiting and it’s Hugo’s first time in his apartment. Maybe it has a lot more to do with the fact that he woke up this morning and instead of being in his lap Porter’s hand is under his chin now.

There’s a beer in his hand, he remembers dimly, and he brings it to his lips to take a sip. It doesn’t really help, but he takes another anyway.

“Dillon, these are all _gorgeous_ ,” Hugo is saying, voice soft and breathless with awe. “Anton'd shown me photos but it really doesn’t do them justice until you see them in person!”

Dillon can’t help but smile. Hugo’s maybe six years younger than him, studying literature or something similar. Dillon knows Anton’s told him about it more than once but maybe Dillon’s got a touch of selective hearing when it comes to Anton talking about Hugo.

He glances over at Anton and he’s watching Hugo with an expression so fond it makes Dillon’s heart ache a bit. Anton’s head over heels for this boy and Dillon, grudgingly, can see why.

“Wow,” Hugo says again, somehow even more awed, and Dillon turns.

He’s standing in front of Porter - the _statue_ , he corrects himself. Dillon tenses.

“This is amazing,” Hugo whispers, almost reverent. “So beautiful. So life-like!” He looks up at Dillon and beams. “Who is it? Is it someone you know?”

Dillon’s mouth falls open but no words come out. The statue had just winked at him again from behind Hugo’s back.

“He said he doesn’t know anyone who looks like this,” Anton supplies dryly and Dillon jumps at the sound of his voice. “I don’t know if I believe him, it’s _awfully_ detailed. Probably some secret lover, hm?”

Dillon looks over at him with wide eyes and Anton is watching him with a strangely serious expression. Hugo’s laughing with delight across the room and Dillon can’t break the tense staring contest Anton has him locked in.

“Weren’t both hands in its lap?” Anton asks, voice soft. “You didn’t start a whole new one, did you?”

Dillon’s quiet for a moment and then he forces a grin on his face. “It moved on its own,” he jokes, almost believably. “Spooky scary moving statue.”

Anton doesn’t smile. Just watches him with that quiet intensity that’s always made Dillon’s stomach swoop dizzyingly. Dillon shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to keep the grin on his face.

“Ow!”

He and Anton both flinch at the sound and turn to see Hugo clutching his hand to his chest, staring wide-eyed at the statue. They both rush over and Anton pulls Hugo’s hand away to look at it. He’s bleeding, not a lot but enough that it’s beading steadily from the tip of his finger.

“I’m sorry, Dillon.” Hugo’s looking at him almost tearfully when Dillon meets his gaze. “I shouldn’t have touched it, I must have caught my finger on a rough edge or something. I should have asked, I’m sorry!”

“Don't apologize, you don't - you didn't do anything wrong,” Dillon manages weakly but he can't help but looking over at the statue.

It’s _staring_ at them.

At first Dillon thinks the eyes are the only thing that’s moved and he leans in under the guise of looking for where Hugo could’ve possibly cut himself. He runs his fingers down one impeccably smooth cheek and he realizes that the statue’s smile has shifted into something that is unmistakably a smirk.

He takes a step back.

“I’ll go get you a band-aid,” he says after a pause, then rushes off to his bathroom.

\---

When Anton and Hugo leave Dillon slams another beer.

He thinks probably he should be more concerned about the fact that he appears to have a haunted statue in his house but right now… right now he just feels lonely.

Anton and Hugo are great. They're some of the best people he knows and thinking about them leaves a hollow little ache in his chest.

He's lonely. That much has been true for a very long time.

Sometimes he imagines Anton and Hugo coming to him and inviting him along on dates, imagines what it'd be like to kiss them - both of them - or hold their hands. They're nice thoughts. Impractical and unlikely but nice.

He cracks another beer and goes to sit on the floor next to the statue, rests his cheek on the solid marble thigh.

“If you were real,” mutters Dillon, “I would treat you really well. Take you on romantic dates and buy you shit, all that.”

He chokes on a forced laugh. Realizes he's starting to cry. He lets the tears come; he doesn't have the energy to stop them tonight. They drip down his face to bead on the sculpture’s leg and he watches them disinterestedly.

A warm hand presses against the back of his head and he jolts up.

When he looks up Porter is smiling again, so kind and so tender, hand frozen with fingers outstretched just above Dillon’s head.

Dillon stares for a second. Then he sobs and presses his face back into Porter's thigh. Maybe it's just his own body heat warming the marble, but it almost feels like Porter could be putting off heat of his own. It’s comforting and maybe he doesn’t feel quite so lonely.

Gentle fingers card through his hair and Dillon cries.

\---

Dillon spends two days screening Anton's calls. He doesn't have any errands to run and he doesn't feel like doing much at all really so he sits in front of Porter, examining every inch of him for imperfections. There aren't any, of course. Dillon is excellent at what he does.

Porter's smile stays on his face, sweet and bright and heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Dillon thinks he could love him if he were real. That maybe he could love him now, even.

On the morning of the third day someone bangs on his door and of course it's Anton.

“Jesus,” says Anton as he pushes into the apartment. “Have you slept at all since the last time I saw you?” He sniffs and his brows come together. “Or _showered_? What have you been doing?”

Dillon shrugs. Anton stares. They're both very quiet for a long moment and Dillon is distantly thankful that Anton hasn’t looked over into his studio space, where Porter is leaning back on one hand now.

“Go shower,” Anton says eventually. His voice is gentle but firm. “I'm taking you for breakfast.”

Dillon makes a dismissive little sound. “You don’t have to do that, I’m fine-,”

“Dillon.”

Dillon forces himself to look Anton in the eye. He’s looking at him with that quiet intensity again but there’s concern bleeding into his gaze and Dillon feels abruptly guilty.

“Yeah, okay, just… wait outside, alright?”

Anton shoots him a strange look but shrugs, heads out of the apartment.

Dillon showers in record time, brushes two days of grime from his teeth. He hasn’t eaten, he realizes, not since he’d last seen Anton. His stomach grumbles, right on cue.

He stops to run a hand down Porter’s arm on his way to the door. The smile on his face has faded a bit - it’s still there but it’s edged with melancholy. Dillon feels bad.

“I’m sorry,” Dillon murmurs, leans in to kiss Porter’s forehead. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

\---

Dillon's exhausted when he gets back and it takes him that long to realize he actually hasn't slept more than an hour or two in the past few days.

Porter's hunched over again and Dillon drops to the floor next to him, leans his head on his knee and stares up into his face. He looks sad again and Dillon feels guilty.

“I'm sorry,” he mumbles. Porter blinks at him and it's not jarring anymore. Maybe it should be but it's not.

“Sorry,” he says again, a little more quietly this time. Porter's white lips quirk up just a bit and Dillon shoots him a little smile back.

He presses his cheek to Porter's thigh, closes his eyes. A hand comes up to rest in his hair a second later and instead of scared he feels relieved.

“Anton said I should go away with him and Hugo,” he says. “He thinks I've been working too much.” Porter's hand goes a bit tense and for a brief moment Dillon thinks about how a marble statue is touching him, thinks a little wildly about how it could probably crush his skull with little to no effort.

Gentle fingers comb through his messy hair and he exhales slowly. He hadn't realized he was holding his breath.

He laughs shakily. “He's worried about me,” he whispers. Can't get more volume out. “He doesn't need to be. It was nice of him to invite me, I guess.”

Porter's fingers tug lightly at his hair and he looks up. He's frowning again and Dillon's heart clenches.

“Don't be sad,” he says in a rush, rises up on his knees and grips Porter’s thighs. “I'm not leaving you. I promise.”

Porter tilts his head. It’s the first time Dillon’s actually seen him move more than his eyes.

He smiles slowly and Dillon smiles back.

\---

Dillon sleeps well that night, curled with his head in Porter’s lap.

The next morning he calls Anton and tells him he’s taking his advice and is going on an extended vacation. Anton sounds so thrilled that Dillon almost feels bad for lying to him.

He showers and changes into clean clothes and heads into his studio. Drops to his knees next to Porter and leans his head on Porter’s thigh.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers. Porter touches his face and Dillon closes his eyes.

\---

Maybe he sleeps, on and off. He gets up to go the the bathroom a couple of times and he thinks he notices the sun go down, and then come back up. Once, twice.

It doesn’t really matter.

He presses his face into Porter’s hip. He’s so warm now, so comforting and sometimes when Dillon rests his ear on Porter’s chest he hears the gentle thud of a heartbeat.

He loves Porter. And Porter loves him.

He’s _happy_.

The sun goes down again. The moon is full, shining in the windows of the loft. Distantly he remembers they were the reason he bought the place - huge, floor to ceiling windows that let in the perfect amount of light.

Porter is beautiful bathed in moonlight.

Dillon stares up into his gorgeous, perfect face and smiles.

Porter smiles back.


End file.
